Sunday, July 23, 2006

I had read The Death and Life of Superman before. But after seeing the Justice League Unlimited episode "Hereafter" where the world (and the Justice League) has to move on after Superman's funeral, I wanted to read it again.

The novelized version of the comic book has three sections, mirroring the comic books: Doomsday, Funeral For a Friend and Reign of the Supermen.

After a brief telling (mostly through memories) of Superman's history, we learn that Clark has proposed to Lois (she said yes) and he told her his secret. While giving a rare interview, Superman learns that the Justice League is fighting (and losing to) a huge villian: Doomsday. He abruptly leaves the interview to join the battle.

Marvel's 1602 is an 8 issue series that puts Marvel villians and heroes in the year 1602.

I have to admit, I'm not very familiar with Marvel's heroes. I know Spiderman from the movies and the cartoons. I only know X-men from the movies. And I had heard of Nick Fury (and Michael Knight... er... David Hasselhoff's TV movie), but knew nothing about him. When I first started reading, I was bored and couldn't get into the story because I didn't associate with the characters I had seen so far: Fury and Dr. Strange.

Since I had borrowed the books, I didn't want to hold onto them too long and I at least wanted to read through it. So, I gave it a second shot. Almost immediately after getting past my previous attempt, I was hooked (dang, had I read one more page). I was hooked.

Thursday, July 6, 2006

In the new issue of Rolling Stone, Brian Hiatt spends 5 days with Pearl Jam during their US Tour. The interview, mostly with Eddie Vedder, gives a lot of (at least to me) persiously unknown information about my favorite band.

Eddie and the band talk about how they dealt with stardom in the early 90's, deaths of those around them and the origins of the name Pearl Jam...

We went to see X-Men: The Last Stand over the weekend. Neither one of us had heard too many good things about the movie and weren't all that excited about going. Well, we were definitely more excited for Superman Returns. (Image from Wikipedia)

I have to admit, we were both pleasantly surprised. Both of us liked the previous X-Men movies with the second one being the better of the two. Normally we only make it out to the theaters only once or twice in a year. Not twice in seven days. We hadn't even planned on seeing a movie but we were out to dinner near a theater, wanted to see X3 on the big screen if we could and didn't have other plans, so we went to see it.

Saturday, July 1, 2006

Advertisers pay to post details about their "opportunity," specifying, among other things, how they want bloggers to write about, say, a new shoe, if they want photos to be included, and whether they'll pay only for positive mentions. Bloggers who abide by the rules get paid; heavily trafficked blogs may command premium rates.

I just want to be clear, I do NOT do anything like this. I post about Pearl Jam, Superman Returns, books I read and OpenBSD because they're things that interest me. I am, in no way, compensated for anything posted here. I do get a very small percentage from the icons at the bottom of my page and the occasional Amazon link, but I imagine that the only payback I get from those are my own click throughs.

Superman Returns was an example given in one of the articles. Since I posted about Superman Returns, I wanted to make it clear I do not participate in such practices. That is all.